The Dead Sea – Drone shots by Tzvika Stein

The Dead Sea. Perhaps it’s the name that sounds a bit scary or the mere fact that people can float on it magically. As a child the Dead Sea fascinated me in a wonderful and horrific way. I kept asking friends and relatives who’d already been there to tell me what it felt like, and I replaced the mostly less adventurous answers with my own imaginations of the Dead Sea.

As I grew older and began to understand the laws of physics, the Dead Sea lost some of its mystical power of attraction on me. However, the beauty of this natural wonder still fascinated me as a grown-up and the weightless floating on the salty water was less boring to me than for those who’d told me about it when I was a child.

When I discovered the photos taken by Tzvika Stein a couple of days ago, that sea spellbound me once again. The landscape photographer regularly travels to the Dead Sea and for some time he’s been taking along his drone on his trips. His drone images are breathtaking, especially because of the numerous color nuances, structures and sinkholes that can be seen on it.

However, they can only be partially recognized as the Dead Sea is permanently sinking. It dries out and probably in the near future it will totally disappear. There are some reasons for that and, little surprising, some reasons caused by mankind. For instance, the water from the main river source, the Jordan, is completely drained and companies that settle around the sea also contribute to that. Meanwhile there are also some attempts to prevent the sea from drying out. For this reason, for instance, in the so-called “Peace Channel” water from the Red Sea is transferred into a desalination plant and the remaining salt is pumped through a pipeline into the Dead Sea. We can only hope that this will work out.

Tzvika Stein’s photos are wonderful nevertheless. What do you think? 🙂